The winds of Fall are gusting as we tip toward the preponderance of Darkness. In the Chinese Concordance,* Autumn is the season of the West, the Tiger, and Metal, all aligned with Xi Wang Mu (which can be translated as the Western Grandmother or Queen Mother of the West). Its designated organs are the lungs—called the Great Yin, another title of this goddess--and the large intestine. Its sound is sighing, and it correlates, on the negative side, with the emotions of sadness and grief. (Grief has its place, and its sacredness, but it’s not an enjoyable feeling.) The dying back of herbs is part of this connection, and watching things pass away.

“Nobody knows her beginning, nobody knows her end.” –the Zhuang Ze

Here’s a funny thing about grief. Its opposite is not joy, if you ask me, but hope. Grief comes when someone or something is irretrievably gone, lost. The depths of grief mean the end, at least temporarily, of hope: the door appears forever closed. Once your heart remembers the indestructibility of spirit, and that everything comes in cycles, then hope returns as a salve.

This year, we offer thanks and farewells to several women who have passed too soon, all from cancer, and each one with courage and dignity: Marione Thompson-Helland, editor and mainstay of the The Beltane Papers, a longstanding Goddess magazine. Tee Corinne, the beloved lesbian photographer and erotic artist (known for her Cunt Coloring Book, which opened up the vulva’s beauty and diversity to many women). Deborah Rose, a healer-acupuncturist and Goddess woman who did some perceptive writing about Mary Magdalene (see her work at http://www.magdalineage.com). Many salutations go out to these sisters, for the fruits that you bore.

Also, may blessings and prayers go forth for Shekina Mountainwater, Sid Reger, and Morning Glory G’Zell, decades-long witch priestesses who are on the path of healing. In the name of all the goddesses, with the power of all the elements, Svaha!

The positive expression of Autumn’s power is in righteousness. Here the Western concept of Libra is in full accordance, with its emphasis on justice and balance. We turn our faces toward these amazon imperatives, and as the ever-self-reinventing Arianna Huffington reminds us, toward fearlessness. We can use every iota of that, so let’s remember, and affirm it. What is our strategy? We have to look at the terrain. (No need to go into the politics! war, environment, patriarchy! we know the situation all too well.) But what is the lay of the land just now?

In late August, we went through the third and last pass of Uni (“Jupiter”) trine Urania. In other words, a current favoring expansive vision and illumination. In case this aspect didn’t come across as all that beneficent (for most people I know it was a tough passage), there’s a reason. It coincided with the first pass of three long-ranging oppositions of Saturna and Neptuna. (OK, this is a quick and dirty shorthand, for purposes of mutual intelligibility.) This energetic encounter can present with difficulty and confusion, even discouragement and in the worst cases, despair. On the macro level, this causes structures to crumble as well. It’s natural to question and re-examine under this influence, but watch the pull toward self-doubt.

This infrequent configuration also has great potential, if we work with it, to dissolve old pain, negative patterns, and structural barriers of long standing. It offers the opportunity to build afresh from a visionary perspective, to manifest our dreams in concrete forms. This will be possible if we can relinquish the dead weight we are holding. As Ammachi says, let go of the stones you carry, the old pain. That’s the Saturnian side; as for Neptuna, avoid escaping into… whatever flavor of escapism you tend toward! This is a time to guard against going negative, or into denial. Put the Neptunian energy to work on dissolution in a conscious and directed way. Positive intention, holding to the vision, clarity and optimism are what will get us through and over and beyond the obstacles.

How to work with difficulty, and how to understand the horrors and injustice going on? I don’t claim to have the answers, but will ask the question! In classic patriarchal theology, they call it theodicy, which means the problem of how the Divine can co-exist with or allow evil to exist, even prevail. In the Goddess-reverent realm, we have gone a long way from knocking heads at the feet of authoritarian male gods, but we still face this basic issue. What does it signify that so much slaughter, rape, genocide and destruction of the land and web of life goes on, and has only accelerated over the years? That dominators prevail and the generous, as well as the vulnerable, are felled?

The problem comes up in a pagan context in the Icelandic Edda. This of course shows no Goddess heaven, but a highly patriarchal society. (We live in one of those, as well, although we have carved out significant cultural spaces of sanctuary.) Anyway, a series of loosely historical epics (very loose) tell of the hardships and losses of a valiant woman named Gudrun. Her brothers murder her first husband, then force her to marry Attila the Hun, with the connivance of her gold-greedy mother. In spite of the suffering they have caused her, Gudrun tries to warn her brothers that Attila is plotting to lure them into a trap. They ignore her and come anyway. Even then, Gudrun picks up a sword and defends them with a vengeance, but to no avail. She bides her time and carries out her plan to kill Attila and their sons—like a Gothic Medea**—and burns the house down around him. After liberating herself, Gudrun rushes to hurl herself into the sea, “fierce with hate against the Norns.”

When I first read this passage, many years ago, part of me rebelled against the phrasing, suspicious of the intentions of the scribe who penned it. And yet I knew that it was a genuiine expression of pain in a context where the ultimate Dispositors, far beyond the Aesir gods, were these exalted goddesses. A huge Why? hurled into an apparent void, as Gudrun lived the harshness of patriarchy. So the Fates allow, provide, ordain: what? Why? And what is up to us? Are we not part of their weave? How can we bring our power to bear on the obstacles that arise around us?

The names of the Norns personify change and movement through time, deriving from an ancient Indo-European root *Uert which meant “to turn, spin, move in a circle.” [Bauchatz, 13] It may have originally been based on the rotating movement of the spindle, which remained an attribute of the Fates. In many daughter languages, including Norse, Saxon and German, this original root had evolved into a verb of being and becoming. The Old Norse conceived of the Fates as Being in motion, spinning and turning: Urdh, the eldest: “Became.” Verthandi, the present, “Becoming.” And the maiden Fate, Skuld: “Shall be.”… The Saxons called the elder aspect of Fate Wurdh, the Germans, Wurt, and in Old English her name was Wyrd or Werd, giving rise to the medieval word for destiny, weird. All these names spring from the completed aspect of the verb “to be, to become.” [Compact Old English Dictionary, 3731] The shaper of destiny herself sums up fates already fulfilled, now bringing new things into being. … In the epic Beowulf there is a saying, Seo Wyrd geweard: So Wyrd became, or happened. Other gnomic proverbs call her a weaver: “what Wyrd wove for me (me thaet Wyrd gewaf). In the Eddic poem Groagaldr, a mother’s blessing invokes the power of Fate as a weaver: “May the web of Urdh be around thy way.” [Bray, 159] (Full citations pending publication. Copyright Max Dashu 2000.)

Gudrun’s bitterness toward the Norns may resonate with our own feelings about the sometimes incomprehensible realities we face, especially from the standpoint of justice. One important difference is that her path was a solitary one, short on allies, and her loved ones, especially her beloved daughter, were cut away from her. As feminists we know how crucial it is to create alliances and bonds that will stand up to the tests and pressures that are brought to bear on our lives. Yet we also know that they don’t always stand up, or that we just lose people, and come face to face with grief. Then too, sometimes we are surprised to find who can be our allies, and from directions we least expected.

There are times where we have to fall back on our inner resources, on faith and righteousness standing before loss and sorrow, with deep resolve and fearlessness. Some things may not be knowable in certain moments; we may not be able to reach understanding, or even feel any light at all. A Maasai saying addresses such times when misfortune and injustice prevail, “Never mind, because Engai is still present.”*** This is when the spirit has to call out, and reach with all her power, to stand in the Presence. Again, and again. The light always returns, or rather, our consciousness of it is restored, and the nectar flows again.

Whatever our personal fates may bring, may we always live in accordance with the Sacred, and never lose sight of its truth: the infinite and inexhaustible Sri, the vital Essence and creative power, which overcomes all obstacles.

*The Chinese Concordance is a name for the cosmological association of the directions, elements, seasons, organs, emotions, and colors. Known as Wu Xing, these “five elements” form the basis for Chinese medicine, astrology, feng shui, and Taoist mysticism. They are metal (which corresponds to air), water, wood, fire, and earth.

**Of course, in the oldest Medea stories she does not kill her children to get revenge against Jason, as Euripides and other classical writers claimed. Older accounts say it was the people of Corinth who did the deed, and point to longstanding rituals of expiation performed annually in that city as proof.

***Engai is a Maasai name for the Divine which is dual-gendered (Kenya).